


Everything in its Right Place

by musamihi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musamihi/pseuds/musamihi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John stops by to help Greg and his three year-old daughter decorate for the holiday – and to help keep Greg from going to pieces, as always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything in its Right Place

**Author's Note:**

> Written for temporaryage at the [Sherlockmas 2012](http://sherlockmas.livejournal.com) holiday exchange on Livejournal. **Warnings** for discussions of illness and death; some language. Thanks to thesmallhobbit for beta-reading!

Chloe turned the box neatly upside down, and its contents – a well-compacted bunch of crumpled silver ribbons – toppled out in piles onto the floor. Greg tutted at her, but otherwise let her be; he'd given her that one because it held nothing she could break, and if she wanted to make a right mess with it all over the living room he couldn't really bring himself to mind. He was having trouble – as always – getting the damn tree to stand straight, and the less 'help' he had from his daughter in the next few minutes, the better. Three year-olds had a way of wriggling into very inconvenient spaces at the worst possible time.

"Try to keep it all in one place, sweetheart," he admonished as a drift of silver vanished under the sofa. He peered out at her from behind one of the branches drooping off the bottom of the tree. "Those go on right after the lights, all right? You going to be ready?"

She nodded vigorously and darted around collecting the stuff to put it _back_ in the box. A couple of minutes later Greg stood, wiping his sap-sticky hands on his jeans, and took up the first strand of lights (all of which he'd laid out in neat, parallel rows). He'd wrangled them into shape this morning after their usual Sunday breakfast, wondering anxiously with each tangled wire whether this would be the year he'd have to buy new ones. But they held out for him, and he draped them around the narrow tree – only a few inches shorter than he was, taller than their usual – as he always did. They glowed white and red among the stiff, shadowed branches, evenly spaced.

And then he seized Chloe by the waist, box and all, and settled her on his hip. "Want to help?" She did, of course; and he pressed his lips gently against her mess of dark hair and lifted her obligingly to let her start hanging the little curls wherever she chose.

Lacey had always teased him about the ribbon – cheap, disposable scraps that he'd carefully packed and unpacked every year of their decade of marriage. It wasn't that they had any sentimental value – except that his mother had always used something similar to decorate – but he'd never been one to throw things away, even when it might be easier. He washed and saved the plastic cutlery that came with takeaway; he folded wrapping paper. It wasn't a matter of money. Home was home, and things that came into it stayed there, stayed a part of it – he'd have applied the same careful consideration to throwing out wrinkled old Christmas decorations as he would have to repainting the walls. And now Lacey had been gone almost two years, and his habits hadn't changed; if anything they had intensified, making him preserve receipts a little too long, keeping the post in stacks on the kitchen table even when he had no real use for it, carefully organising every single drawing, trinket, or scrap of paper Chloe brought home from nursery. He saw himself doing it, of course, and there were days when he released the constant tension between the uncontrollable mess and his need for order, when he forced himself to throw things out, to admit that he would never need this ticket stub or that coupon.

But then there were days like this, when he watched Chloe shove a little slip of ribbon into the space between two branches and the thought of it fluttering to the ground was enough to start a tightness in his chest. 

Once she'd finished the top half of the tree, he set her on her feet to let her begin her attack on the lower branches as he started unpacking the more breakable components on the coffee table. When he was ankle-deep in old, well-used packaging – newspapers, paper towels, magazine pages from embarrassingly early in the nineties – there was a knock at the door.

Casting a wary glance between Chloe and the table full of glass and ceramic, Greg hauled himself to his feet and went to answer it. John stood on the doorstep, a package under his arm and his jacket pulled up over the back of his head to shield himself from the cold rain. Wet, frigid air rushed in around Greg's ankles, and for a moment the atmosphere around him felt less dense; he grinned.

"Hey." John shrugged his shoulders by way of greeting, sending a little torrent of water splashing toward the mat. His smile was sheepish, and tight with the cold. "Miserable day, isn't it?"

"Get inside. What brings you by?" Not that he needed a reason. John's jacket already had its hook in the tiny foyer; his shoes fit where they were accustomed to do beside Greg's wellingtons. His coming had been a disturbance the first few times, requiring hasty shuffling and piling-up of old coats and disused umbrellas, but eventually Greg had just rearranged around him.

John kissed him; Greg stepped in closer to lean down and meet him and felt icy water soaking into one of his socks. "It's terrible out," John said, resting his freezing hand for a moment on Greg's side before advancing with him into the living room. "So I thought it might be a good afternoon for a little something, hm?" He hefted the bag in his arm and Greg took it, sliding the clear, flimsy plastic bottle of peppermint schnapps out of its wrapping. Its price sticker (which John had relocated proudly to the front of the neck) boasted: £3.99.

"Oh, hey – the good stuff."

"Nothing but the best for you."

"And did you bring a little rubbing alcohol to chase it, Doctor? Chloe," he said, grateful to see her more interested in making a nest of the packaging than in the row of glass icicles sitting at her eye level, "John's here. Do you mind if he helps?"

Chloe shook her head; she was smiling but she was silent, as she so often was these days, and Greg tensed a little under the thought – frequently recurring – of finding time in their already untenably hectic week to shuttle Chloe to and from the speech therapist. John crouched down and took up a scrap of newspaper. "And where are you going to put this one?" he asked. Chloe snatched it back from him with a grin and threw it once more into the pile. John looked up, resting his arms on his knees. "I thought some cocoa would be the thing, actually. Have you got any?"

"Have we got any cocoa?" Greg set his hands on his hips, raising his eyebrows at Chloe, who was already pushing herself out of the sea of paper towards the kitchen. "You know we have, don't you – dumped about a cup of it in the pancakes this morning. All right – come and help." He stooped to catch her by the hand and let her drag him into the kitchen. "And maybe John can get some of the more breakable pieces out of harm's way while we're at it."

The worktop was still cluttered with dishes – plates half-coated in powdered sugar, a mixing bowl with a drying film of brown batter, juice glasses, a mug, wilting orange peel. Greg plopped Chloe and the schnapps up beside the mess and reached in to pull the cocoa out from behind the open bag of flour.

"What is this?" Chloe had the bottle in her hands, turning it clumsily back and forth. Greg was relieved to hear her say something; never in his life had he seen someone who seemed to be so happy, and yet kept so quiet. He didn't want her to be a mystery to him, and found himself in certain moments devastated by the thought of it – by the images it recalled of Lacey, sitting silent at the kitchen table, on the sofa, at the side of the bed, increasingly wordless because as time progressed there were fewer and fewer words that weren’t sickness, surgery, medication, prognosis, pain.

"That," Greg said, turning the bottle the right way for her, as though she could read the label, "goes in dad's cocoa."

"Can I have some?"

"See if you like it, first." He took it from her and unscrewed the cap, holding it a couple of inches from her face; she leaned in to sniff at it, and drew back with an exaggerated grimace. "That's right," Greg laughed. "You know the cheap stuff when you smell it, don't you."

"I'll have mine _without_."

"Yes, you shall. Hold this, sweetheart." He handed her a measuring cup, which sat like a bucket in her hands. "Come on – count with me." And together they counted out the tablespoons, every lisping word lightening something in him like foam bubbling off boiled milk.

***

It was a bit past eight when he put her to bed. The rain had lightened; there was only a mist on her bedroom window, gold in the warm light of the streetlamp. He sat in the dark with her – no, she didn't want a story, no, she didn't want to tell _him_ a story. She chatted softly instead about what she was going to do tomorrow at nursery, what she was going to pack for their trip next week to Nan's, the toys she thought each of her three cousins (a terribly sophisticated lot, all of them being over ten) might like. Between the sound of her voice, halting but cheerful, and the quiet rustle of paper and cardboard just downstairs, Greg felt as tranquil as he had in days. After pulling the blanket up past her shoulder he stood for a few moments at the head of her bed, savouring the sensation he knew wouldn't last and gazing out past her thin curtains into the glazed and distorted street. Then he went quietly downstairs again, passing the dark doorway of his bedroom in favour of the cluttered warmth below.

John was seated on the sofa, his feet propped up on one of the ornament boxes, now stuffed only with packing paper. The lights had all been turned out, save the ones on the tree; a trio of candles, all melted down to different heights, had been shoved into a little candelabra the base of which was a singing angel he'd always found sadly tacky (but an indelible part of the seasonal décor all the same, as Lacey's father had given it to them). Greg's mug sat on the coffee table, full again – round four.

"Romantic," he said, as dryly as he could manage in the face of John's self-satisfied smile. 

"Damn right it is."

Greg stepped over John's knees and took his seat a little heavily, leaning forward to wrap his hands around his mug. John's arm snaked around the back of his waist. "Thanks for cleaning up." 

"Don't get ahead of yourself." John's hand was rubbing at his side, slow and firm and with just a touch more concern than Greg really liked – a thoroughly familiar sensation. "I left the disaster zone you made of the kitchen."

The thought of food drying on plates and cocoa powder crusting beneath the damp measuring cup made Greg itch a little, but he stayed where he was, turning to John and kissing at the crest of his ear in a conscious effort to distract himself. "I'll get it in the morning." He blew the steam away from his mug in a rushing sigh. "Might as well start the week early. All the shit I have to do before we take off Saturday morning …"

"You're coming to the party, aren't you?"

"Christmas Eve? I'd never get a sitter."

"So bring her. Sherlock will mope if you're not there."

"He'll mope anyway. I can't believe he had anything to do with asking a bunch of people up for drinks." Rolling his shoulders, Greg settled back against the sofa. John's arm was a warm, hard line across his back. "Walking around your flat's hardly safe for a grown man – imagine trying it when you're knee-high. If he's that upset, I'll see him for New Year's. Before, if he decides to stir up trouble."

"Probably will," John murmured against the rim of his mug. 

Greg shut his eyes, letting his head sink down onto the back of the sofa. His throat felt thick with chocolate and liquor, and however deeply he drew breath, it never seemed to be quite enough. John slid his arm out from behind him and stroked his hand through his hair instead, and Greg tried to turn his attention to the feeling of those fingers and nothing else, something soft and concrete to rest on.

"You're tired." John's hand landed inside Greg's knee, still hot from holding his cocoa. 

Greg made himself open his eyes. Another stone of guilt was forming in his middle. "Sorry," he said, bringing his mug to his lips as he tried to think of something to say. "I've had –"

"It's all right." John pulled his drink out of his hands; before Greg could sit up, John was straddling him, resting his hands on his shoulders just where they met his neck. He leaned in to kiss him, and after a few moments Greg felt his back easing under John's hands, his breathing becoming a little more natural under the regulation of that warm, careful mouth. It was John's way of leading him away from the spiral of worry he seemed always to be walking into, and it was nothing new. He'd learned to like it, even if the frequency of this kind of attention made him feel sometimes like he was being _tended_ to, as if he couldn't care for himself. He'd learned to take it and appreciate it for what it was – well-intentioned, pleasant, not ineffective – rather than spurn it as yet another sign that his life was falling away from him like a crumbling wall and that he was helpless to put it back together on his own.

He hadn't always been so receptive. The first night John had touched him he'd half snarled at him, too unstable to bear even the added weight of a hand on his shoulder.

 _It must have been hard for you_ , John had said, three pints in at a pub where Sherlock had left them both in disgust after a dead-end investigation. A year and two months after Lacey had stopped treatment; a year, almost to the day, after she'd died. His hand had settled on Greg's back just under his neck. _It must have been hard for you, having to –_

 _It wasn't hard for_ me, Greg had snapped. _I didn't hurt. I didn't spend the last year of my life choking down painkillers and too weak to get out of bed. For_ me _it was a fucking piece of cake._

Almost a year later, and he felt that things were only marginally more established, only a little less likely to collapse at the slightest provocation – but John was a part of the foundation, not the wind howling at the door. He was a part of the home that Greg was striving so hard to keep up for himself and for Chloe; not yet a permanent piece, not mortared in among the other bricks, but firmly ensconced among the shoes and the coats, well-fitted to the sofa, easy to imagine at the kitchen table. He, like everything else, had his place, and Greg was happiest when he was in it. 

Greg ran his hands down John's thighs, breaking the kiss and sighing into the pit of his shoulder. "Come to bed," he hummed against him. It was ridiculously early, but he felt it was where they both needed to be, in that room that daunted him constantly with its emptiness, the irreparable crack, the bottomless chasm in his life. John didn't fill the gap, but he made it easier to bear. He made Greg feel like he wasn't just a helpless, tongue-tied child, no more capable than his little girl, simply playing at adulthood out of the terror at what would happen if he stopped. He kept him ordered – or just ordered enough.

John nodded, kissed his temple, and shifted awkwardly off of him. They went upstairs, leaving the boxes in a line beside the coffee table and the mugs of cocoa congealing slowly in the dim, red glow of the tree. 

Five o'clock the next morning, Greg shook John out of bed, and they padded down together to make as quiet a job as possible of putting the kitchen back to rights. Together they soaked and scrubbed and stacked and forced the disarray as far into the corners as they could, racing the kettle. Tea was a bracing, warm reward, a brief and fortifying pause before John had to go out into the cold, wet morning. Greg sent him with a kiss, leaning out across the threshold to catch him one last time before they had to part ways for the day, perhaps for the week. And when he shut the door again, there was an empty spot beside his wellingtons that was not a void, but a comfort – a familiar promise of return.


End file.
